Here's a curious issue: when I log in as myself, and start octave (3.8.2), there are no packages: "ver" claims than "no packages are installed". But when I log in with root privileges: "sudo octave" (Ubuntu); then "ver" shows all my (eight) installed packages.
I'm not sure what I've done here; but it seems as a matter of good sense that I should not have to invoke root privileges to access the installed packages.